The Wire

Video games! Super Heroes! Pizza! Oh my! The Fall 2011 PlayTech Saturday was held on December 3rd, and it was a huge success! 57 Mouse Squad students from 12 different schools from all over New York City came together at Parsons The New School For Design for a day of video game testing, super hero designing and pizza chomping!

After an exciting welcome speech from Parsons, Students were fueled with pizza and given free reign to test out a variety of brand new, never before seen video games and interact with the game designers themselves!

Game designers--all Parsons students--were eager to get feedback from their most valuable critics -- our Mouse student play-testers! The games were in many different stages of development. Some were near completion, while others were still in their beginning stages.

In this game, students were able to shift gravity in order to discover secret objects. There were several other games like this one that were almost fully programmed and designed, needing only minor tweaks. Other games, like the one below, were still in early development stages. Students got to see one game that was still in it's paper stage, which we learned was actually one of the first steps to developing a great game. Why do you think students start out by building a paper prototype of their game?

One game in development was an art history game where students got to learn about mixing colors and famous paintings. Another game taught students about malaria and mosquitoes. Students also got to experiment with a developing XBOX KINECT game.

Another favorite activity taught students about character and storyline development--one of the very first steps to designing a good game. In this activity, students were asked to invent and draw a super hero that would take on a problem in their neighborhood.

At the end of the day, Mouse students were given the opportunity tell us their favorite part of the day in exchange for a pair of awesome Mouse shoelaces. One wrote, "I love the games. I wish I could try the rest of it. I love it here!" Another student wrote, "I loved it! I am a huge fan of video games and plan to become a developer or playtester!" It just goes to show how much of a positive impact PlayTech Saturday had on our students!

It was a great day for everyone involved! Thank you to Parsons The New School for Design and all the Mouse Squads that came. We can't wait until the next PlayTech Saturday and hope to see you there!